Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Today, on the eve of the last of National Poetry Month, I offer you two very different poems courtesy of The Writer's Almanac — because I can't decide.

Her LegacyFor Aunt Cleone

After the divorce,she sent me twenty dollarstucked into the foldsof her crinkly blue stationerywritten hard on both sides.No use cryingover spilt milk, she said,still, what a shame. Therenever had been divorcein the family. By then,I had a childand could barely remembermy aunt's voice, but her certaintieswere plain. No leapingoff cliffs for her.The whir of the sewing machine,her shelves lined with canned goodsstraight from the garden,that was more her way. Her long letters,full of other people's news,never mentionedmy father's silence,or her own lack of children.From a quick how are you,she'd go right tothe surgery of a neighborI would never meet,or what a nice visitshe'd just enjoyed with Elsie.Who was Elsie? I never exactly knew.But, after all, weren't we all partof the great messy human family?It swirled around her kitchen,where she tied a fresh apronaround her waist,and carried on.She would hope for the best,she concluded before signing her name.Use the moneyfor something special.Something just for you.

It's snowing hard enough that the taxis aren't running.I'm walking home, my night's work finished,long after midnight, with the whole city to myself,when across the street I see a very young American sailorstanding over a girl who's kneeling on the sidewalkand refuses to get up although he's yelling at herto tell him where she lives so he can take her therebefore they both freeze. The pair of them are drunkand my guess is he picked her up in a barand later they got separated from his buddiesand at first it was great fun to play at beingan old salt at liberty in a port full of women withhinges on their heels, but by now he wants only tofind a solution to the infinitely complexproblem of what to do about her before he falls intothe hands of the police or the shore patrol—and what keeps this from being squalid iswhat's happening to him inside:if there were other sailors hereit would be possible for himto abandon her where she is and joke about itlater, but he's alone and the guilt can't bedivided into small forgettable pieces;he's finding out what it meansto be a man and how different it isfrom the way that only hours ago he imagined it.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Is there a pre-nuptial pasta anniversary? If so, David and I will celebrate it as he tries to snake out the kitchen drain that holds a pound of angel hair pasta (and I thought the hard part was cooking a second pound!).

The Eggshell Debacle of 2004 was temporary, so there is hope....

The Longly-Weds Know

That it isn't about the Golden Anniversary at all,But about all the unremarkable yearsthat Hallmark doesn't even make a card for.

It's about the 2nd anniversary when they were surprisedto find they cared for each other more than last year

And the 4th when both kids had chickenpoxand she threw her shoe at him for no real reason

And the 6th when he accidentally got drunk on the wayhome from work because being a husband and fatherwas so damn hard

It's about the 11th and 12th and 13th years whenthey discovered they could survive crisis

And the 22nd anniversary when they lookedat each other across the empty nest, and found it good.

It's about the 37th year when she finallydecided she could never change him

And the 38th when he decideda little change wasn't that bad

It's about the 46th anniversary when they bothbought cards, and forgot to give them to each other

But most of all it's about the end of the 49th yearwhen they discovered you don't have to be old

As you can tell from the biography, Tim Nolan is a lawyer by trade. The last, but not least, of the daffodil poems comes from another person who helps keep us on the straight and narrow.

Daffodil

The challenge was a bit daffybut I hear the roar of the trumpets and this quest I must bare

Will I turn yellow and run from fear of trying to enlighten this central crown?

Only time shall tell! ……

Not a rose bud so my sleigh I can not seek

I must be quick witted and firmly plant my feet

It’s April and as you know spring is finally here

I’m not a drinking man but I could sure use a cold beer

The frost of the glass would tickle my tongue as the yellow colored malt will ease my senses

Why a Daffodil? It’s just a silly bulbous plant

Why not something more easily described? The smell of bacon cooked in the morning or the aroma of a fresh pot of coffee on a chilly morning in May

I can hear the trumpets playing softly from its pretty yellow crown

I was hoping some one else could hear it but there is no one else around

I now can see why she does this to me

Mother Nature you are a pest, but since you are here forever and I am just a guest

I will enjoy the sights and smells that you so graciously offer and thank for the rain you send and sunshine on my shoulder

The wind in my back, the sun in my face makes this Daffodil garden such a wonderful place.

by Bill Kitzerow

Remember, today is the deadline for submitting your bathroom poems. Now, I cannot remember which day is which, so if your poem comes in on Monday, who's the wiser? Not I, I assure you. So keep those cards and poems coming!

Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit's carnal ecstacy.

Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bellAnd fashionable madmen raiseTheir pedantic boring cry:Every farthing of the cost.All the dreaded cards foretell.Shall be paid, but from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought.Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of welcome showEye and knocking heart may bless,Find our mortal world enough;Noons of dryness find you fedBy the involuntary powers,Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.

Friday, April 25, 2008

I want a red dress.I want it flimsy and cheap,I want it too tight, I want to wear ituntil someone tears it off me.I want it sleeveless and backless,this dress, so no one has to guesswhat's underneath. I want to walk downthe street past Thrifty's and the hardware storewith all those keys glittering in the window,past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-olddonuts in their café, past the Guerra brothersslinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.I want to walk like I'm the onlywoman on earth and I can have my pick.I want that red dress bad.I want it to confirmyour worst fears about me,to show you how little I care about youor anything except whatI want. When I find it, I'll pull that garmentfrom its hanger like I'm choosing a bodyto carry me into this world, throughthe birth-cries and the love-cries too,and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,it'll be the goddamneddress they bury me in.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

For those who are taking up the pen for our next contest, here is a poem I hope will provide at least a modicum of inspiration:

A Girl in Milwaukee and a Girl in Brooklyn

My wife is talking on the phone in MilwaukeeTo her girlfriend in Brooklyn.But, in the middle of all that, my wife has to go pee.And it turns out that the girl in Brooklyn,At the very same time, also has to go pee.So they discuss this for a moment,And they're both very intelligent people.They decide to set their phones down and go to the bathroom(This was back when people set their phones down).So they do this, and now we have a live telephone line openBetween Milwaukee and BrooklynWith no one speaking through it for about two minutes asA girl in Milwaukee and a girl in Brooklyn go to the bathroom.

Monday, April 21, 2008

Technically, a necessary is a privy. However, when you need one, there is no quibbling.

So here is your challenge: write a poem about a bathroom. It doesn't have to be your own bathroom. (But it does have to be your own poem.) Be creative: I wrote a poem that began in my childhood kitchen, involved poker and wound up in a cemetery.

C'mon, I'll be there with you all the time. Er, not there, but — never mind. Just write your bathroom poem. I'll be there when you get out.

Bathrooms

The condo I just bought has two. Some houseshad three. What to do with them all? Use one?Turn the others into extra closets?Reserve one for guests? There are noneI'd invite. I talk too much to toomany people all day. On conferenceweekends I have to talk Sundays too,and when I close my door, I want silence.

Back home we were seven. Our bathroom the onlyroom we could lock in a house without keys.We'd sit, read, dream, alone, not lonely,until testy banging disturbed our peace.Then we'd sigh, flush, put down our text,and turn our sanctuary over to the next.

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Today is the anniversary date of when Marie Curie and her husband Pierre isolated the radioactive element radium.

In recognition, I will share a poem by Adrienne Rich about the Nobel Prize-winner.

Power

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earthone bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-oldcure for fever or melancholy a tonicfor living on this earth in the winters of this climate.

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:she must have known she suffered from radiation sicknessher body bombarded for years by the elementshe had purifiedIt seems she denied to the endthe source of the cataracts on her eyesthe cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-endstill she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denyingher woundsdenyingher wounds came from the same source as her power.

I also want to share a second poem by Adrienne Rich, which happens to be one of my favorite poems. It was published in Atlas of a Difficult World.

XIII (Dedications)

I know you are reading this poemlate, before leaving your officeof the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening windowin the lassitude of a building faded to quietlong after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poemstanding up in a bookstore far from the oceanon a gray day of early spring, faint flakes drivenacross the plains' enormous spaces around you.I know you are reading this poemin a room where too much has happened for you to bearwhere the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bedand the open valise speaks of flightbut you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poemas the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairstoward a new kind of loveyour life has never allowed.I know you are reading this poem by the lightof the television screen where soundless images jerk and slidewhile you wait for the newscast from the intifada.I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-roomof eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent lightin the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,count themselves out, at too early an age. I knowyou are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thicklens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read onbecause even the alphabet is precious.I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stovewarming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your handbecause life is short and you too are thirsty.I know you are reading this poem which is not in your languageguessing at some words while others keep you readingand I want to know which words they are.I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hopeturning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to readthere where you have landed, stripped as you are.(1990-91)

I apologize that I've been otherwise occupied and not as attentive as I should have been this week. Thank you for your patience, and we will spend the rest of National Poetry Month together.

Look for your daffodil poems to be published this week, and I am planning another event or contest. Keep your pens poised!

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and I'm glad to share my favorite pocket poem — though I confess, it's more a "put on your wall and make everyone read it there in the office while you watch" poem.

Some days, it really is everything, the wet green stalk of the field on the other side of the road. Would you risk everything to reach your wet green stalk? (I know how it sounds, people, but work with me!)

Small Frog Killed on the Highway

Still,I would leap tooInto the light,If I had the chance.It is everything, the wet green stalk of the fieldOn the other side of the road.They crouch there, too, faltering in terrorAnd take strange wing. ManyOf the dead never moved, but manyOf the dead are alive forever in the split secondAuto headlights more suddenThan their drivers know.The drivers burrow backward into dank poolsWhere nothing begetsNothing.

Across the road, tadpoles are dancingOn the quarter thumbnailOf the moon. They can't see,Not yet.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

I'm sorry if we were poem-less yesterday. It was a crazy day that really didn't stop until an hour into today.

However, it was a good kind of crazy: David and I became engaged to be married.

I didn't think anything of David insisting we go to a 10 pm movie — on a weeknight. And why wouldn't Alicia and Bob want to go see "Leatherheads," too? At our favorite theater, no less. Punctuality is important for both David, who is a stickler (God love him, he has his job cut out for him) and me (when it comes to movies, people — I don't want to miss a single trailer!). And despite an unanticipated visit from his mom and (she's fine!) her trip down the stairs, I was standing in the movie theater as the first trailer came up on the screen.

Only it wasn't a trailer. It was David. Dropping on one knee (next to a poster of a movie titled "Married Life," which I innocently had nixed from the evening's lineup).

Once I got my voice back and finished kissing him, I gave him my answer: absolutely yes. With silly grins plastered on our faces, we enjoyed "Leatherheads" and shared a tub of popcorn.

Three different folks at Cinema Arts moved projectors around to make this surprise a reality, so support them and their compatriots by watching your movies at Cinema Arts Theatre and University Mall Theatres. Tell them I sent you.

I'm sorry I was late.I was pulled over by a copfor driving blindfoldedwith a raspberry-scented candleflickering in my mouth.I'm sorry I was late.I was on my waywhen I felt a plotthickening in my arm.I have a fear of heights.Luckily the Earthis on the second floorof the universe.I am not the egg man.I am the owlwho just witnessedanother tree fall overin the forest of your life.I am your fathershaking his headat the thought of you.I am his words dissolvingin your mind like footprintsin a rainstorm.I am a long-legged martini.I am feeding olivesto the bull inside you.I am decoratingyour labyrinth,tacking up snapshotsof all the peoplewho've gotten lostin your corridors.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;He is trampling out the vintage where grapes of wrath are stored;He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword,His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,His day is marching on.CHORUS

I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:"As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My Grace shall deal;Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,Since God is marching on."CHORUS

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgement Seat.Oh! Be swift, my soul, to answer Him, be jubilant, my feet!Our God is marching on.CHORUS

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,While God is marching on.CHORUS

And because it's Sunday, you get a bonus poem:

The Fancy Shotby Charles Dawson Shanly

"Rifleman, shoot me a fancy shotStraight at the heart of yon prowling vidette;Ring me a ball in the glittering spotThat shines on his breast like an amulet!"

"Ah, captain! here goes for a fine-drawn bead,There's music around when my barrel's in tune!"Crack! went the rifle, the messenger sped,And dead from his horse fell the ringing dragoon.

"Now, rifleman, steal through the bushes, and snatchFrom your victim some trinket to handsel first blood;A button, a loop, or that luminous patchThat gleams in the moon like a diamond stud!"

"O captain! I staggered, and sunk on my track,When I gazed on the face of that fallen vidette,For he looked so like you, as he lay on his back,That my heart rose upon me, and masters me yet.

"But I snatched off the trinket--this locket of gold;An inch from the centre my lead broke its way,Scarce grazing the picture, so fair to behold,Of a beautiful lady in bridal array."

"Ha! rifleman, fling me the locket!--'tis she,My brother's young bride, and the fallen dragoonWas her husband--Hush! soldier, 'twas Heaven's decree,We must bury him there, by the light of the moon!

"But hark! the far bugles their warnings unite;War is a virtue,-weakness a sin;There's a lurking and loping around us to-night;Load again, rifleman, keep your hand in!"

Saturday, April 12, 2008

On April 12, 1861, the Confederacy shelled Fort Sumter, S.C, which launched the American Civil War.

In honor of this day, I give you a poem written by a Southern lawyer, born in Winchester, Va., which later was set to music and is considered one of the most famous Rebel songs. I first heard it years ago on "Songs of the Civil War," which my friend Collin shared with me, and I found it very stirring.

Oh, I'm a good old Rebel soldier, now that's just what I am;For this "Fair Land of Freedom" I do not give a damn!I'm glad I fit against it, I only wish we'd won,And I don't want no pardon for anything I done.

I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic," too!I hates the Freedman's Bureau and uniforms of blue!I hates the nasty eagle with all its brags and fuss,And the lying, thieving Yankees, I hates 'em wuss and wuss!

I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do,I hates the Declaration of Independence, too!I hates the "Glorious Union" -- 'tis dripping with our blood,And I hates their striped banner, and I fit it all I could.

I followed old Marse Robert for four years, near about,Got wounded in three places, and starved at Point Lookout.I cotched the "roomatism" a'campin' in the snow,But I killed a chance o' Yankees, and I'd like to kill some mo'!

Three hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust!We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us.They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot,But I wish we'd got three million instead of what we got.

I can't take up my musket and fight 'em now no more,But I ain't a'gonna love 'em, now that's for sartain sure!I do not want no pardon for what I was and am,And I won't be reconstructed, and I do not care a damn!

Friday, April 11, 2008

Okay, so I've been all over Robert Frost lately. However, today I have a special reason: Leo Rosten, the author of Joys of Yiddish. I have loved that book for years. It's so much more than a dictionary. It's a cultural reference book filled with jokes, wry observations and love of language. I couldn't resist — and neither should you. Go ahead, pick up a copy and enjoy!

Anyway, today is Leo Rosten's birthday. The New York Times wrote a great story about him in 1997, and I learned a lot about his life.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

I've been a little swamped this month, so I let the Poem-a-Day e-mails pile up, unattended for a few days. I know, shame on me, but today I read them.

If you haven't already, you really must sign up. The poems include not only a poem in its entirety, but also a couple of other titles (with hyperlinks) to other poems by the same author and related poems. You will recognize some poems, and others you may not.

Monday's poem by Alan Shapiro led me to another. I liked them both, so I will share both with you now.

The one that was e-mailed was "Just" and among the other poems suggested by the same author was "Haunting." Really, did you think I could resist?

Without further ado, please enjoy these two poems, courtesy of Poets.org.

Just

after the downpour, in the early evening,late sunlight glinting off the raindrops slidingdown the broad backs of the redbud leavesbeside the porch, beyond the railing, each leafbending and springing back and bending againbeneath the dripping, between existences,ecstatic, the souls grow mischievous, they break ranks,swerve from the rigid V's of their migration,their iron destinies, down to the leavesthey flutter in among, rising and settling,bodiless, but pretending to have bodies,

their weightlessness more weightless for the ruse,their freedom freer, their as-ifs nearly not,until the night falls like an order andthey rise on one vast wing that darkens downthe endless flyways into other bodies.

It may not bethe ghostly balletof our avoidancesthat they’ll remember,nor the long sulksof those last months,nor the voiceschilly with allthe anger wewere careful mostlynot to showin front of them,nor anythingat all that madeour choice to liveapart seem to usboth not onlyunavoidablebut good, but just.

No, what I thinkwill haunt them isprecisely whatwe’ve chosen toforget: those tooinfrequent (thougheven towardthe end stillpossible) momentswhen, the childrenupstairs, the dinnercooking, one of uswould all at oncestart humming an oldtune and we’d dance,as if we didso always, ina swoon of glidingall through the house,across the kitchen,

down the halland back, we’d swaytogether, we’d twirl,we’d dip and cha-cha and the childrenwould hear us andbe helpless notto come runningdown to burrowin between us,into the centerof the dance that now,I think, will haunt themfor the very joyitself, for joythat was for them,for all of ustogether, somethingbetter than joy,and yet for youand me, ourselves,alone, apart,still not enough.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

On Monday, Philip Schultz was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Failure, his collection of poems. Enjoy this poem from an earlier book, Living in the Past.

Grandma Climbs

Grandma climbs a chair to yell at God for killingher only husband whose only crime was forgettingwhere he put things. Finally, God misplaced him. Everyonein this house is a razor, a police radio, a bulging vein.It's too late for any of us, Grandma says to the ceiling.She believes we are chosen to be disgraced and perplexed.She squints at anyone who treats her like a customer, includingthe toilet mirror, and twists her mouth into a deadly scheme.Late at night I run at the mirror until I disappear. The day is overbefore it begins, Grandma says, jerking the shade down overits once rosy eye. She keeps her husband's teeth in a matchbox,in perfumed paraffin; his silk skullcap (with its orthodox stains)in the icebox, behind Uncle's Jell-O aquarium of floating lowlifes.I know what Mrs. Einhorn said Mrs. Edels told Mr. Kook about us:God save us from having one shirt, one eye, one child. I knowin order to survive. Grandma throws her shawl of exuberant birdsover her bony shoulders and ladles up yet another chicken thighout of the steaming broth of the infinite night sky.

The white water rush of some warbler’s song.Last night, a few strewings of ransacked moonlightOn the sheets. You don’t know what slumped forwardIn the nineteen-forties taxi or why they blamed youOr what the altered landscape, willowy, riparian,Had to do with the reasons why everyoneShould be giving things away, quickly,Except for spendthrift sorrow that can’t bearNeeding to be forgiven and look for somethingTo forgive. The motion of washing machinesIs called agitation. Object constancy is a termDevised to indicate what a child requiresFrom days. Clean sheets are an exampleOf something that, under many circumstances,A person can control. The patterns moonlight makesAre chancier, and dreams, well, dreamsWill have their way with you, their wayWith you, will have their way.

And a bonus poem:Privilege of Being(Click on title to hear Hass reading the poem)Many are making love. Up above, the angelsin the unshaken ether and crystal of human longingare braiding one another's hair, which is strawberry blondand the texture of cold rivers. They glancedown from time to time at the awkward ecstasy--it must look to them like featherless birdssplashing in the spring puddle of a bed--and then one woman, she is about to come,peels back the man's shut eyelids and says,look at me, and he does. Or is it the mantugging the curtain rope in that dark theater?Anyway, they do, they look at each other;two beings with evolved eyes, rapacious,startled, connected at the belly in an unbelievably sweetlubricious glue, stare at each other,and the angels are desolate. They hate it. They shudder patheticallylike lithographs of Victorian beggarswith perfect features and alabaster skin hawking ragsin the lewd alleys of the novel.All of creation is offended by this distress.It is like the keening sound the moon makes sometimes,rising. The lovers especially cannot bear it,it fills them with unspeakable sadness, so thatthey close their eyes again and hold each other, eachfeeling the mortal singularity of the bodythey have enchanted out of death for an hour so,and one day, running at sunset, the woman says to the man,I woke up feeling so sad this morning because I realizedthat you could not, as much as I love you,dear heart, cure my loneliness,wherewith she touched his cheek to reassure himthat she did not mean to hurt him with this truth.And the man is not hurt exactly,he understands that life has limits, that peopledie young, fail at love,fail of their ambitions. He runs beside her, he thinksof the sadness they have gasped and crooned their way out ofcoming, clutching each other with old inventedforms of grace and clumsy gratitude, readyto be alone again, or dissatisfied, or merelycompanionable like the couples on the summer beachreading magazine articles about intimacy between the sexesto themselves, and to each other,and to the immense, illiterate, consoling angels.

I wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the Milky Way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but theyOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:A Poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed--and gazed--but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.

Now, here is a challenge: write a poem that has the word "daffodil" somewhere in it. The poem can be as short as a haiku or as long as, well, Wordsworth's poem.

Submit it to me by April 13 via e-mail and I will publish it (anonymously or with full credit, whichever you prefer). I will write a poem, too, and publish it as well. Depending on the collection of poems I receive, I will begin publishing them April 14.

All those who submit poems will receive a book of poetry for their efforts.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Nothing says "Sunday" more than the mythical underworld. It's a category for poems at Poets.org, which is very cool. (At least, I think so.)

I'd have gone straight to Dante, but you would have been expecting that.

So, with no further ado, I give you Glück.

A Myth of Devotion

When Hades decided he loved this girlhe built for her a duplicate of earth,everything the same, down to the meadow,but with a bed added.

Everything the same, including sunlight,because it would be hard on a young girlto go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness

Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night,first as the shadows of fluttering leaves.Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars.Let Persephone get used to it slowly.In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting.

A replica of earthexcept there was love here.Doesn't everyone want love?

He waited many years,building a world, watchingPersephone in the meadow.Persephone, a smeller, a taster.If you have one appetite, he thought,you have them all.

Doesn't everyone want to feel in the nightthe beloved body, compass, polestar,to hear the quiet breathing that saysI am alive, that means alsoyou are alive, because you hear me,you are here with me. And when one turns,the other turns—

That's what he felt, the lord of darkness,looking at the world he hadconstructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mindthat there'd be no more smelling here,certainly no more eating.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

i.Snow geese in the light of morning sky,exactly at the start of spring. I waslooking through the cracks of the blinds at my future which seemedabsent of parades, for which I was grateful,and only yesterday

I watched what an April wind could doto a body wrapped in silk,though I turned my eyes away,the way the teacher says,once the beauty was revealed.

iiHow long it takes to die, in the fifty-fifth yearis what I thought about today.I told some truths so large, no one could bear to hear them.I bow down to those who could not hear the truth.They could not hear the truth because they were afraidthat it would open a veil into nothing.I bow down to that nothing. I bow down to a single red planetI saw in the other world’s sky,spinning,as if towards somefleshy inevitability.

I bow down to the red planet. I bow downto the noisy birds, indigenous to this region.Only sorrow can bend you in halflike you’ve seen on those whose loves have gone away.I bow down to those loves.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,Bringing the cheque and the postal order,Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,The shop at the corner and the girl next door.Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:The gradient's against her, but she's on time.Thro' sparse counties she rampages,Her driver's eye upon the gauges.Panting up past lonely farmsFed by the fireman's restless arms.Striding forward along the railsThro' southern uplands with northern mails.

Winding up the valley to the watershed,Thro' the heather and the weather and the dawn overhead.Past cotton-grass and moorland boulderShovelling white steam over her shoulder,Snorting noisily as she passesSilent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.Sheepdogs cannot turn her course;They slumber on with paws across.In the farm she passes no one wakes,But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.Down towards Glasgow she descendsTowards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnacesSet on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.All Scotland waits for her:In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochsMen long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,Receipted bills and invitationsTo inspect new stock or visit relations,And applications for situationsAnd timid lovers' declarationsAnd gossip, gossip from all the nations,News circumstantial, news financial,Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,Letters to Scotland from the South of France,Letters of condolence to Highlands and LowlandsNotes from overseas to HebridesWritten on paper of every hue,The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,Clever, stupid, short and long,The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleepDreaming of terrifying monsters,Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,Asleep in granite Aberdeen,They continue their dreams,And shall wake soon and long for letters,And none will hear the postman's knockWithout a quickening of the heart,For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

LONDON, March 27 (UPI) -- A British survey suggests a third of Britons cannot correctly identify the profession of playwright William Shakespeare.

The survey of 3,000 people also found a quarter of respondents did not know John Keats was a poet and less than a third did not know "Winnie-the-Pooh" scribe A. A. Milne was an author, The Sun reported Thursday. An additional two-thirds of respondents could not correctly identify Oscar Wilde as the author of "The Importance of Being Earnest."

The poll, conducted ahead of a poetry contest run by English poet laureate Andrew Motion, suggested 70 percent of Britons have never written a poem to a loved one although two-thirds of survey participants said they would like to receive one.

"Although most people accept that poetry has a vital role in personal as well as national life, these findings show a depressing level of ignorance," Motion said. "The good news is that 61 percent said they would like to have poetry play a role in their lives -- in which case we hope they might also want to write one."

Here's a Shakespeare poem so you won't be among these people!

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Last month, I mentioned that List Universe was a great way to whittle away hours, going from list to list learning about Weird Al Yankovic, mass murderers and space.

Now there's one more reason: poetry.

Check out 20 Examples of Why You Should Enjoy Poetry. The fabulous list includes samples of some of English literature's most famous poems, including Shakespeare, Keats, Barrett Browning, Donne and more. Here's a sample:

No man is an island,Entire of itself.Each is a piece of the continent,A part of the main.If a clod be washed away by the sea,Europe is the less.As well as if a promontory were.As well as if a manner of thine ownOr of thine friend’s were.Each man’s death diminishes me,For I am involved in mankind.Therefore, send not to knowFor whom the bell tolls,It tolls for thee.

Visit the list — and tell me which of the poets or poems you think also should have been included.